Stand-Up Comedy

Style and Aesthetics

Informality and a lack of contrivance are hallmarks of its contemporary style. The stand-up comedian performs for the most part without conspicuous staging, props, or costuming. Effective use is made of the diegetic space of the (deliberately) bare stage, namely a microphone stand and a stool or a table; the performer wears a costume that is a deliberate “non-costume” of what he or she would typically wear as an audience member. This informality extends to the form of talk itself: It is in prose and without musical accompaniment. Patterning of the speech—rhythm, cadence, repetition—might emerge out of this more prosaic talk, only to return again to a less-stylized performance. Characterizations are achieved through mimicry, gesture, and facial expression, and not through costume or makeup: Moreover, although gifted impressionists will create opportunities for characterization by constructing routines around particular voices, characterization is a means within the more general flow of talk and not an end in and of itself. The overall appearance of spontaneity, even if and when the audience is aware that what is being performed is not extemporaneous, is integral to the aesthetics of stand-up comedy. Props, costumes, and music break that illusion, and comedic performances where they are in use are typically reframed as different from, or a subtype of, stand-up comedy proper.

American stand-up comedian, actress, and writer Amy Schumer, performing in 2006.

Source: Maryanne Ventrice/Wikimedia Commons.

Antecedents

While it is tempting to locate stand-up comedians along an axis that includes both court jesters and early American humorists such as Mark Twain and Will Rogers, doing so frames stand-up comedy either by function or by content. Rather, if one begins with identifying what the stand-up comedian actually does, one sees that the more direct antecedents are small-scale artistic verbal performances in small groups, whether variously labeled stylin’ and profilin,’ talking shit, or shit talk, or unnamed traditions of a recognized verbal artist momentarily taking focus (and granted license to do so by those present) on engaging in conversational play. This differs from the jester tradition, in which the person is irrevocably “othered” as opposed to emerging from the group as a peer, and is different from the monologist who performs a fixed text that works independent of audience participation.

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